Monday, July 5, 2010

At the south end of Queen’s Park stands a statue of Sir John A. MacDonald, the father of the Canadian Confederation. Late afternoon on Saturday, before the police decided to push protesters out of the so-called “designated protest area”, his pointing finger leads right into the epicenter of the crowd. It seems less of an accusation than an open address to all parties: the assembly of police from all over Canada, the summit leaders, the Canadian government, the city of Toronto, the protesters, the media, even casual bystanders. He says “What now?”

Is that too dramatic? The Globe and Mail announced that the roughly 900 arrested constitutes the largest mass arrests in Canadian history. This is our beast as much as anyone’s: it was Paul Martin who sat with Lawrence Summer in the U.S. Treasury Building in 1999 and drafted up the list of 20 developed and developing nations on a brown manila envelope. It was our leaders who opted to spend 1.1 billion dollars on the joint summits, nearly 10 times as much as any other international G-summit in history and closer to 100 times the amount spent at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh last September.

What now, indeed? What conclusions will the Auditor-General draw from this massive overspending (the vast majority of which seems to have been eaten up with egregious overtime pay and fancy crowd control toys for the police)? What will come of the inquiry into police conduct over the weekend? What will happen with the trials of protesters and Toronto’s Police Commissioner Bill Blair’s promise of 400 formal charges (and what kind of violent contortions of the law will be necessary to make that many convictions hold up)? Or will it all just quietly disappear?

On Friday morning I and some other photographers walked around the summit area, eyeing the giant perimeter fence which was then still open. That morning it had been reported that a York student had been arrested based on a temporary law that had supposedly been passed in secret, allowing police to detain anyone who refused to present identification or submit to a search within 5 metres of the fence. By the end of the weekend it would come to light that no such law existed, that people could be searched only if they came within the security area.

Not that any of these legal distinctions mattered: by the end of the weekend, police were searching and arresting people all over the downtown core, anywhere even remotely close to a site of protest activity. student had been arrested based on a temporary law that had supposedly been passed in secret, allowing police to detain anyone who refused to present identification or submit to a search within 5 metres of the fence. By the end of the weekend it would come to light that no such law existed, that people could be searched only if they came

For now though, the area was eerily quiet: police were bored and most seemed unthreatened by photographers without a press pass. They admitted to knowing very little about the fence or even what they were supposed to be doing there. Even then I thought it was almost inevitable that this casual demeanor would quickly transform.

If there was visible tension, however, it was with the private security guards, who stood outside of the large high-rises around Front St. and told us not to take pictures even when we were simply walking by. The police received comfortable overtime pay and had no specific property to defend, but these people seemed understandably nervous about having to do their own policing.

That afternoon, while a few dozen Oxfam and Council of Canadians reps met a multi-million dollar police force in Huntsville, the first major rally met in AllanGardens in Toronto. These were the grassroots community organizers: everyone from Iranian socialists to PETA, from women’s rights and anti-poverty activists to a 12-piece marching band. I even heard one group advocating for free transit. If there was a consistent issue being addressed directly related to the G20/G8 itself, I didn’t pick up on it. The thinking seems to be that the summits themselves are mostly wasted time and therefore all these heterogeneous organizations address what the summits fail to, which is entirely fair. Still I can’t help but think the popular conception of the meetings as billion-dollar photo-ops – as depressing and probably at least partially accurate as this might be – is more encouraging than the potential for the working poor and middle classes around the world to be forced to pay for government bail-outs of multi-billion dollar banks. Here again, Canada was a leader: Stephen Harper fought against taxes on banks or financial transactions -- taxes that, by most accounts, major banks could easily absorb -- and he won.

It was an early sign of how, over the course of a weekend, real issues could become deflected, masked and hopelessly fragmented, most notably through a perfectly scripted and symbiotic relationship between a handful of anarchists with rocks, 19,000 riot police and an international media contingent obsessed with a couple of burning cruisers. The tension was already beginning to fire up on Friday: the sun was blazing hot and minor confrontations felt thick with prescience. During the march, police on bicycles blocked the entire length of sidewalk, making it nearly impossible for people to leave the dense crowds on Carlton/College St., or even, in some cases, to move anywhere.

It seems Emomotimi Azorbo was trying to get past this rather arbitrary barricade when he was arrested. From my perspective, all I could see was swarms of police followed by protesters and media. A journalist from the Real News Network was punched in the face and had his microphone torn off. Azorbo was initially charged with “failing to obey police orders” (and now faces charges on assault and resisting arrest), an absurd allegation considering that Azorbo is completely deaf and cannot speak. Later the police would insist they had no way of knowing he was deaf, and yet they refused Azorbo’s friend when she begged them to allow her to translate and to handcuff him at the front so he could communicate. He was held in the detention centre on Eastern Ave. overnight without an interpreter.

Even amidst the escalating tension I was drawn to a group of protesters all dressed in black, with a banner surrounding them right around their faces. They moved in a tight formation and when one photographer tried to snap their picture, I saw one shake his head angrily and pull his cap way over his eyes. In what was, at the time, still something of a celebratory gathering – stereos were playing M.I.A. and mid-90’s R&B while protesters danced down University Ave. – they looked ominous and out-of-place.

By Sunday, the Toronto Sun was carrying a front-page article with these so-called “Black Bloc” members and a single headline: “THUGS.” After September 11th it was “BASTARDS”, which begs the question how hijackers responsible for thousands of deaths and vandals who failed to cause any documented bodily harm could only be distinguished by a slight discrepancy in terminology. Bastards are unruly, uprooted outcasts without clear principles. Thugs are self-serving and ruthless but otherwise highly-organized professionals. One might reasonably argue the titles should be reversed.

Regardless, the Bloc don’t deserve it. Their discipline is remarkable –anyone who can wear ski masks and goggles in 30° weather has tobe – but they’re not an organization or movement but a strategy.When the time is ripe for vandalism, individual members breakaway to destroy targets, then blend back into the crowd. Theyare a blob more than a block, an indiscriminate, anonymous massof aggression and rather empty rhetoric. During the destruction ofLondon’s financial district in 1999, a statement was printed anddistributed inside thousands of masks: “Our masks are not toconceal our identity but to reveal it…Today we shall give thisresistance a face; for by putting on our masks we reveal our unity;and by raising our voices in the street together, we speak ouranger at the facelessness of power.” Inspiring, but the reverseseems to be more true: rather than distinguishing themselvesfrom peaceful protesters they seem to foster paranoia withinthe police forces, as unjustified as it may be. In between bursts ofvandalism (and no I will not call it “violence” – injuring, harassing andintimidating innocuous demonstrators is violence, this is just pettyproperty damage), the Bloc shed their black clothes to blend in withthe crowd, and police continually tried to justify their crackdown byinsisting protesters contained Bloc members in their “civilian” clothes.

Surely, after several decades of this type of tactic in large-scale protests,those involved would have some idea that this claim – that dressing up inblack protects non-violent protesters – is a ruse. So why the disguises?It seems far more likely that it protects individual members, renderingthem indistinguishable from each other, and the inevitable photographsthat do get taken unusable as evidence. Smart, yes, but to confuse themwith a highly-organized political group is as misguided as confusing theG20 with a legitimate and democratic international body. In one of thesaddest images of the weekend, property destruction that was initiallyhighly-selective – singling out banks and large corporations – becamefar less discriminate along Yonge St., where a tousit info centre and alittle tacky Mom & Pop souvenir shop was counted among the casualties.They were teenagers, most of them, 18 or 19.

But the clumsiest disguises on Friday weren’t the Bloc. During the marchI came across four burly men being taunted by protesters.How the forcehas yet to discover a convincing way to look like a demonstrator isabsolutely beyond me. One wore a tiny Che Guevera patch on his backpackand had a marijuana-leafed bandanna around his neck, itself smacking of ahasty Google search on “How to Look Like an Anarchist”. But it was theshiny leather boots that gave them away – that and the fact that whenasked about Che Guevera they looked straight ahead and failed torespond, the same look all police gave when confronted over the weekend.They were found out in a similar way at the Montebello Summit in Quebecin 2007 – that time they were caught with rocks in their hands, one of theworst instances of illegal agent provocateurs in the last decade.

While there hasn’t been any confirmation that undercover police provokedviolence in Toronto, it’s worth wondering what exactly they were doingthere. Surely the hundreds of cops along the sidelines could have sensedif the crowd was getting tense. Did they really think they were going touncover some plot to attack the police or cause mayhem?

Nevertheless, Friday came and went with only a few incidents and ahandful of arrests, and it almost seemed as if the summit might come andgo with little fanfare. On Saturday around noon, crowds began forming inQueen’s Park for the People First March, a labour rally intended to be“family-friendly”. It was raining, but there were still thousands ofdemonstrators by 1:30pm, when the organizers struggled to get everyonein a coherent line to begin marching. I came there to film some friendsperforming street theatre – under the auspices of a little Christian-anarchist group known as the Beansprout Collective, run by Jared Both– but the march started before they were assembled, and they were forcedto perform an impromptu rendition further down University Ave. Armedwith cardboard boats painted with various G8 countries’ flags, they enacteda drama wherein world leaders remain in their own private boats afloaton the rising tide of the economy (based on an actual analogy made by Stephen Harper ), while ordinary people living on the coasts pay fortheir recklessness. I wonder if passers-by didn’t just absorb a moregeneral sense of turmoil and confusion – it was certainly in the air –but there was a theological and political richness to this performancethat unfortunately may have been lost amidst the more simplisticsloganeering. In the end, the boats find Mt.Ararat, but rather thancoming to rest peacefully like Noah, they capsize. I have often thought thatdemonstrations like this are part of an innate desire to make visible theglobal destruction that otherwise remains primarily hidden in countrieslike Canada – a need that links both aggressive and peaceful activists.

Despite the even greater diversity of marchers – which, unlike Friday,included groups normally not associated with left-wing activism –there was a palpable feeling that, as the G20 leaders were escortedby helicopter to the Metro Convention Centre on Front St., this day wouldnot end peacefully, which proved to be well-founded. Sadly, the mostpressing concerns barely received a word in the mainstream press.Local Tibetans with fire in their eyes took the appearance of ChinesePresident Hu Jintao at the summit to demand independence. Theypaid little attention to the police, and I can only assume, when themarch dispersed into pockets of vandalism and peaceful stand-offs, theydispersed. This is tragic, because their demonstrations highlighted howthe G20 – expanded from the original 8 countries to include the mostflagrant human rights abusers in the world – represents the ultimatedemise of democracy in the face of economic“order.” We live oncoasts, not boats.

By 2:00, as protesters began nearing Queen St., lines of riot policebegan blocking various streets between Queen and Richmond.The march rounded Queen at University and headed towards SpadinaAve. At Queen and Spadina the march began to break up, and whilesome headed north on Spadina, crowds began forming just south ofthe intersection against the lines of cops who blocked off all cornersof the Spadina/Richmond intersection. Protesters began donningvinegar-soaked bandannas, and there was the expectation that thepolice would start pushing back. Having wrongly assumed that anyconfrontation would happen here, eventually I turned back to QueenSt.

At 3:00 some protesters lit flares at Queen/Spadina, in clear site ofthe riot police just 50 yards or so south, but nothing was done. Ataround 3:30 I headed east on Queen, slightly behind the vandalismthat I had no idea was taking place. It didn’t take long. Halfwaybetween Spadina and John St. – no more than 100 yards from riotpolice positioned on both sides – I watched two squad cars get beatenup periodically, the glass smashed by metal sewer caps and otherhard objects. It is worth mentioning that maybe a dozen people – ina crowd that at times numbered in the hundreds – were responsiblefor vandalising the cars. The rest were onlookers, independent medialike myself, and other protesters, including many who bravely stoodup to this nonsense. When one of the vandals defended his actions bysaying “This is our day”, one woman pleaded with them to recognizethat the protests were about global justice and not sticking it to thepolice. “This isn’t about us,” she cried passionately.

I watched this charade for about 20 minutes, in which time onlookersbegan to speculate about what two police cars were doing abandonedin the middle of the path of marchers. They served no strategic purpose,and given the slews of police horses and fully-equipped riot cops,made little sense as a means of confronting or dispersing crowds. It ishard to conclude that they served any other purpose than magnets forthose inclined to vandalism, intentionally-placed photo-ops in themaking. The press statements that followed by Blair and others seemsto only confirm this – photographs of the three police vehicles whichwere later torched became the defining icon of the entire weekend, anda way of justifying the billion dollars spent on security. The burnt-outshells became the most mutually-beneficial displays of the summits:for the police, for photojournalists and editors who might never go toBeirut or Palestine to witness true chaos, for summit leaders aiming todeflect the genuine concerns of demonstrators, and for anarchists forwhom direct action and staging a media circus is the only option left.Everyone but those who stand to genuinely lose from the G8/G20policies and/or those interested in more constructive global justice.I thought again of the Tibetan demonstrators, and a Buddhist monkstanding alone at the south end of the security fence, beating a drumfor world peace.

There were other practical reasons why the police might choose notto interfere with property destruction: later, in what can only bedescribed as a systematic campaign of obfuscation on the part of theToronto police, hundreds of protesters became implicated in the actionsof what was almost certainly limited to a few dozen agitators. After theBloc and others moved up Yonge St. around 4pm, in a wave of vandalismthat lasted over an hour and during which not a single member ofthe 19,000 police in the city could be found, Blair would accuse all thosein the vicinity (the majority of whom most likely self-identified asmembers of the media in some form or another) of “complicity” in theseactions. Complicit? Unarmed (and probably frightened) onlookersand media representatives just doing their job carry the responsibilityand not thousands of police, some of whom, at around 4:15 pm in themidst of the destruction, were spotted farther south on King St.removing their riot gear and taking a break? The fact that theseegregious statements largely went unchecked by major news outletscontributed to a collapse in coverage of the weekend. In fact, inmoments of duress large media representatives often disappeared,leaving coverage to independents – as a result, what may prove to beone of the most photographed/filmed events in Canadian historystill managed to be poorly reported (only now, days later, are the realstories beginning to trickle in).

I didn’t walk up Yonge St., but after passing an abandoned streetcarcovered in graffiti near Nathan Phillips Square (the movement againstthe TTC was one cause I absolutely failed to understand in the contextof an international summit), I turned down a nearly empty Bay St.,heading north. Considering that, at the same time, windows were beingsmashed just a couple blocks east, the silence was odd. In a way, though,it was also fitting, since the opportunity for destruction only presentsitself in situations where a civilian presence is lacking: ordinary peoplewho wanted nothing to do with the summit were either driven out of thedowntown core or opted to stay in their homes based on the increasedsecurity presence, allowing free reign for vandals. Finally, at Dundasand Bay, where some limited semblance of normalcy was operating,a massive formation of riot police marched towards me, performinga ridiculous military about-face when they reached Bay St. They weredoing drills in a peaceful, if slightly empty, part of downtown, while acouple blocks over the city was being destroyed. At this point itbegan to feel like everything was being orchestrated from afar, thatthe whole event was as spurious and empty as this procession.

I finally reached Queen’s Park in time to see all four corners around College St. and University blocked by riot police. This was around 5:00,and tellingly, a pile of black clothing lay on the grass outside theUniversity of Toronto’s medical building. The Black Bloc had dispersed.There were several hundred protesters, but it was unclear how manyfollowed the destruction up Yonge St., or how many congregated here(either before or after the police appeared) on their own accord. Thiswas, after all the “designated protest zone”; the place where, more thanany other part of Toronto, protesters should have felt safe to demonstrate.The police had already begun to periodically charge north and west, andI was told an elderly man had been knocked to the ground by a riotshield. Thus began the crackdown. The cops charged in short burstswith several minutes of nervous energy and collective cries of “Shame”from the protesters in between. Those who chose to sit down in frontof the line were met with beatings and arrests. I was hit twice bypaintball guns – once from behind when I was merely trying to getout of the way. One man with several police on him appeared tohave suffered a broken or sprained leg. Those closest to the linewere pepper sprayed. Only after this was well underway, did protestersthrow a few useless water bottles into the crowd, the entire extentof “violence” against the police I saw all weekend.

But by 6:00 it appeared to have petered out. The police had not movedfor about 30 minutes, and the crowd had dwindled to maybe 150-200people, mostly media (there were few protest signs left), with just asmany if not more police. The whole day was turning from boring tofarcical to tragic and back so many times it was making my head spin,and at around 6:30 I prepared to call it a day and go home. I watched theNBC van pack up and drive north around Queen’s Park Circle; most ofthe other major news outlets appeared to be doing the same.

Then the oddest thing happened: in the midst of this non-protest thatwould have inevitably dispersed completely in a matter of a couplehours, the police decided to send everyone home themselves.This was not just the 20 feet they had pushed back over the last twohours, but a stampede, complete with galloping horses, which wouldrun through the crowd to disperse them, turning around within feetof the Ontario parliament building (the irony of this kind of needlessintimidation and abuse happening literally on the doorstep of theMcGuinty government was not lost on the crowd). Throughout,small groups of police could be seen pointing at random individualsin the crowd then bursting out and tackling them to the ground andbringing them behind the lines to be sent to the detainment centre.I saw a young girl on a bike being knocked down and a mantrampled by a horse.

While the Toronto police would later claim they acted accordingto procedure, it was clear that wasn’t the case. Several times I sawpolice brutally attacking protesters only to be restrained by otherofficers. Given the sheer number of police present, it is highlyunlikely that the majority of them have experience with crowdcontrol – they were driven as much by fear, stress and adrenalineas everyone else, they just happened to be the ones with the authorityand the expensive toys. At some point it appeared the entire linewas replaced by another division with more experience, who continuedto push everyone back up Queen’s Park Circle, but without therandom arrests. We were driven down Harbord until the crowd wasdispersed in two different directions by TrinityCollege. Again, thehorses were used to charge, and the police allowed them to comedangerously close to the line of protesters.

On Sunday, the police refused to even wait for any signs ofvandalism or aggression before they made arrests. Organizers of theprotests – and many visiting from outside of Toronto, including alarge number of Quebecois activists – were raided overnight andarrested. One young couple with a six month-old son were raided at 4am by police who refused to show a warrant and only laterrealized they had the wrong apartment. An afternoon rally atthe corner of Eastern and Pape Ave., where the temporarydetention centre was set up in an old film studio (as if the wholeweekend hadn’t had enough un-reality already), was broken upafter an hour despite the fact that even mainstream media sourcesadmit there was no “visible provocation”.

The protests were beginning to take on an anti-Vietnam War vibe:the Eastern Ave. protesters were singing songs in solidarity withthose being detained, then many of them were sent therethemselves. Later that evening, at Queen and Spadina, aspontaneous rendition of “O Canada” was met with a sudden chargeby police. It was that distinct brand of irony that makes you soundpedantic for even labelling it as such.

While I managed to avoid getting arrested, there has been enoughtestimony from the “prison” to establish that it was indeed a nightmare.There were reports of cramped shared cells with cold concrete floors,hours without water, harassment, and zero access to medicaltreatment. There have been increasing reports of women being sexually harassed. And some of these people were bystanders whowanted nothing to do with the protests, many detained after thepolice decided to close in on Queen and Spadina from all four cornerson Sunday night, arresting everyone trapped inside. Many wereeven accredited journalists, like Jesse Rosenfeld who was working onan article for The Guardian, but was beaten and arrested by policeafter revealing an “Alternative Media” press pass.

And then the official contortions rolled in. Ex-PC leader John Torytold CBC Radio that “thousands of peaceful protesters didn’t give thepolice any problems and weren’t given any problems”, as if anyoneinvolved in demonstrations over the course of the weekend hadnot been harassed in some form. For Blair, the violence was notlimited to a few dozen people but “hundreds”, who came to Torontowith the “intent to commit criminal acts”. Given the force’s inabilityto discern between vandals and members of the media – let alonebetween peaceful and violent protesters – this number seemswhimsically arbitrary. Blair even held the Toronto CommunityMobilization Network responsible, the group which facilitated agood deal of the general marches and demonstrations throughoutthe weekend, but who have never, to my knowledge, advocated anykind of vandalism or aggression. Again, these organizers were“complicit”, as if they could have controlled the actions of thousandsof protesters, but the police who failed to rescue independentbusinesses on Yonge St. from vandalism were just doing their job.

And since they were facing “organized criminals”, Blair rolled outa vast “weapons cache” at a press conference on Tuesday. Amenacing collection, it seemed, until the arrows covered in sportssocks (which Blair insisted were there to be covered in flammableliquid and set ablaze) and chain mail were revealed to belong to someTolkien fanatic, innocently trying to cross town to take part in arole-playing game. When pressed, Blair also admitted the chainsawand crossbow were confiscated in an incident completely unrelatedto the summits.

Also included were bandannas and gas masks, as if protection fordemonstrations that most protesters (rightly) predicted wouldinclude tear gas, counted as “weapons.” It made perfect sense now:protecting one’s own health was akin to wielding a weapon.Peaceful protesters were advocating violence, or at least complicitin it. Independent journalists were criminals.

Then, in a complete collapse of accountability and proportionality,Blair called the Bloc “terrorists.” The same word that most experiencedcommentators find problematic even in the context of the loss ofinnocent life. One might even argue that this title gives more politicalcredibility to the “movement” than either the police or the Canadiangovernment would be ready to admit, but I suppose the irrationalgrip that the word has on most Westerners trumps all else.

Admittedly, the hyperbole ran both ways. Was Canada really becoming,in the words of so many protesters, a “police state”? It was, after all,only the extenuating circumstances – where ordinary life in thedowntown core was almost completely shut down for an entireweekend – which allowed the breach of basic rights. It seems to me justas valid to protest that a country which normally allows citizens fullautonomy and recourse to the law should not be allowed to suspendthose rights even under situations of duress. This isn’t about acomplete failure of democracy – even if our countries often facilitateits destruction in less developed nations – but about the limits of democracy.

And yet, despite what appeared to myself and many other witnesses tothese events as a self-evident breach of rights, a poll conducted afterthe weekend was over found that 73% of Torontonians thought thepolice actions were “justified”

. Was this simply a failure of the mediaor were most Torontonians just not paying close enough attention?Did they think all 900 arrests were of violent anarchists? It’s interestingto note that the exact same percentile thought that holding the summitsin Toronto was a “mistake”, suggesting that the desire of most residentsin the city was just for the whole thing – the leaders and the protesters– to go away.

They might have their wish. It would be so much easier to let it alldisappear – for the government to count its losses, for the police tolaunch a private, internal “inquiry”. Even to drop all the chargesagainst the organizers, to silence the protests which have continuedthis week. To board up the windows and allow this whole carnival toplay itself out again in some other city. To insist that this was merelya problem of local security and not global democracy.

Everything about this weekend could have been predicted: whenyou suspend everyday life you can’t expect normal behaviour. Whenyou manipulate legal rights you can’t expect lawful responses. Whenyou hold a summit for fragmented, self-serving and un-democraticpurposes, you can only expect the same from your populace.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

As if the death of Robert Dzienkanski at the hands of RCMP didn't put the public's perception of Canadian police officers in jeopardy already. Rather than admitting what it was -- a careless abuse of power -- and distancing themselves from the incident (however dishonest that would be), the RCMP have taken to defending it as a matter of due course. It is apparently part of officer training to interpret raising two hands in the air as saying "go to hell", as it is to assume that four officers can't restrain a man with a stapler without recourse to a weapon. Oh yeah, and Dzienkanski "directly disregarded a command", which begs the question of how someone who doesn't speak English is supposed to regard a command in the first place.

Now OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino -- whose dark imprint left on Toronto as the city's Police Chief can be seen here -- has taken to deriding the public for questioning the incident. He sneeringly dismissed criticism from those who "could never pass recruitment training", perhaps because ordinary people wouldn't be able to bring themselves to taser a confused Polish immigrant five times. The message is clear: issues involving police treatment of the public need to be handled within the force. Perhaps someone should tell Fantino that the concept of accountability and third-party monitoring is the backbone of a democratic society.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Previewed, dreams turn heinous,untrue: like pausing a foreign film at its climax,subtitles bright yellow against someone's chest,set against picture, not to followa general rule: shot of Detroit andyou're a good friend, Steve scrolled below—veins of traffic running yellow

around Motor City, an aerial view,the same colour, but a betrayal—my waking sensibility.

Shoes lined up behind the line,ready to walk before me.Hatchet through the bathroom door:

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Just thought I'd have a scope-out of my Blogger neighbours. Greet my virtual community, and maybe get some future ideas for content.

1. Kerolato Hecho a Mano -- Bogota, Colombia

1 Single Post, with a little rosy-cheeked girl holding some kind of certificate. I don't speak Spanish, but I'm pretty sure it's a certificate for "Most Likely to Start a Blog and then Not Do Anything With It". Also, she doesn't have any followers either, so this was a boost to my self-esteem.

Ok, we get it. Combo Ninos. Which is, apparently an anime featuring capoeira-fighting kids who change into animals. For "ages 6-10" according to Animation magazine, so I think this blogger is a kid too. Maybe I can get him to design my page.

3. The Hokey PokeyFinally, something in English. Can I just say that no-one wants their music interrupted by a page that automatically loads its own tunes. Especially Squeeze. The latest post is on a device to apply moisturizer to your back, apparently the result of a sudden burst of inspiration after not posting for two weeks. The rest of the blog seems to be about weather, so I guess those two things are "what it's all about" when you live in rural Washington State. I left before I could be plagued with any more AOR. Also, she has two followers, so I hate myself again.

4. Prohibido Decirno

I'm not sure if that's the name of the blog, or just the link which tells me "Permission Denied", but either way I apparently have to be "invited" to view this. Which, ok fine, I mean I baked you this rum cake, and I was going to invite you to play Twister with me, the 40-year old from Washington and the two Spanish kids, but whatever.

5. Shauna's World

Hey "Little Miss Sunshine", how many pictures can you post of people standing by your stupid snow hut? Also, you say there are all these "fab pics" of your mock wedding to Eleanor, but they're not there, which makes me think this whole "mock wedding" is just a scam so you can get your green card.

Sorry, I just found out that when I press 'Back' on my browser and then "Next Blog" I get something different every time, which means it will be very difficult for us all to reach out and form a Neighbourhood Watch.

6. Laguz Brecho

This appears to be some kind of shoe blog, based out of Brazil. You're not coming to my house because you use too many exclamation points, and I don't want those monstrosities sitting in my front entrance. Also, I don't speak Portuguese.

7. Frost 4 Now

"About Me (Rokt): I am a 80 Draenei Death Knight on the European realm Aggramar. A member of British Empire and an avid Warcraft player." I understand Portuguese better than I understand this.

8. La Trastienda

'Trastienda' is Spanish for "back room" and according to the photos, the blog seems to involve the use of high-tech recording devices and/or seances inside old Catholic monuments to find traces of paranormal activity.Moving on...

9. Filipe Cintra

Lots of headline photos with funny (or I can only presume meant to be funny) headlines, way too many capitals, and a pukey-orange design.